Harmony experience with Amazon Alexa

"Alexa, turn on ESPN", "Alexa, increase the volume", "Alexa, pause"

"Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on the TV." Or Xbox, or Roku, or the sports channel...

KNOWN ISSUE — August 8th

Logitech and Amazon are aware of an issue that may prevent the Harmony skill from properly sending commands to your entertainment system. We're working together to resolve this with urgency and apologize for the inconvenience.

When Logitech Harmony and Amazon Alexa work together, you bring the power of voice to your home entertainment center. "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on sports" can power on your TV, set your stereo to surround sound, lower your window shades and even set your table lamps to your team colors.

Connect any Logitech Harmony hub‑based product* with Alexa and you can start or stop Harmony Activities such as Watch TV or Play a Game. You can also play, pause and resume, as well as raise or lower the volume. And if you have a Roku, you can say "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on Netflix" (or HULU or HBO) and Harmony will automatically switch over to that content.

Regional availability

The Amazon Alexa and Logitech Harmony integration is currently available in the United States and United Kingdom.

July 13th — What's new with Harmony

On Thursday July 13th, Logitech Harmony introduced a deeper and more natural integration with your Amazon Alexa voice experience. Play, pause, stop, fast forward, adjust the volume and tune to channel numbers, all without having to say, "ask Harmony to". These features have already been enabled for you — no update is required.

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A single, Harmony skill
Harmony has migrated all the great features from our two skills into one, now titled the "Harmony" smart home skill. Our new integration is immediately available for those already using the Harmony smart home skill. New users may enable this skill using the Amazon Alexa app by selecting Menu > Skills, search for "Harmony" and enable the blue skill.

Entertainment control
In order for Alexa to know where to send navigation or volume commands, you must first start your Harmony Activity using voice. "Alexa, turn on the TV", "Alexa, turn on the news", or "Alexa, turn on my Xbox" will turn on your devices and set everything to the correct input. "Alexa, turn up the volume", or "Alexa, pause" will now properly route commands to your entertainment system and stay in sync with other commands sent using your Harmony remote or Harmony mobile app.

Direct requests
Alexa will route entertainment commands such as "Alexa, turn up the volume" to Harmony for a period of time after you power on your Harmony Activity using voice. Requesting media from other services such as "Alexa, play music from Spotify" will also stop Alexa from routing volume or play/pause commands to Harmony.

You can directly send Harmony entertainment commands by specifying the device at the end of each voice command. For example, "Alexa, turn up the volume on my TV", "Alexa, pause my TV", or "Alexa, pause Netflix" will always work.

Setup

If your Harmony remote is already configured and working in your living room, confirm you're running the latest firmware version.

If you're new to Harmony, download the app from Apple StoreApple Store or from Google Play. Follow the setup guide to add your entertainment devices, create Activities and complete your setup.

Next, ensure Alexa is up and running

If Alexa is already configured, then skip to the last step. Otherwise, follow Amazon's getting started with Echo how‑to guide.

Lastly, connect Harmony and Alexa together

Navigate to Home > Skills and search for Harmony.

Tap the search result for the blue Harmony skill, and then ENABLE.

You're able to set friendly names for each of your Activities. For example, if your Harmony Activity name is "Play a Game", you might set your friendly names to "Xbox" or "PS4" so you can say, "Alexa, turn on the Xbox."

Select the "Add Friendly Name" button beside your Activity to set up one or more names.

Uncheck the box if you don't want Alexa to control a particular Activity.

For your security, Activities containing door locks cannot be controlled by voice and have been removed.

If you have cable or a Roku device then you can also allow Alexa to jump directly to those channels. For example, "Alexa, turn on Netflix" can switch to your Watch Roku Activity and automatically launch the Netflix channel.

Click LINK ACCOUNT at the bottom of your final screen to complete the setup.

You're now ready to control your entertainment devices with your voice. Try saying, "Alexa, turn on the TV".
You can also say, "Alexa, turn off my TV", or "Alexa, turn off my entertainment center" to power everything off.

Using the Amazon Alexa app, navigate to Home > Skills and search for Harmony.

Tap the search result, and then ENABLE. You'll be prompted to log into your Harmony account.

You're able to set friendly names for each of your Activities. For example, if your Harmony Activity name is "Play a Game", you might set your friendly names to "Xbox" or "PS4" so you can say, "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on the Xbox."

Select the "Add Friendly Name" button beside your Activity to set up one or more names.

Uncheck the box if you don't want Alexa to control a particular Activity.

For your security, Activities containing door locks cannot be controlled by voice and have been removed.

If you have cable, satellite or a Roku devicecable or satellite then you can also allow Alexa to jump directly to those channels.

For example, "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on sports" would turn on your TV, set your stereo to the correct input and tune your cable box to ESPNSky Sports.

Or, "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on the movie channel" could switch over to your Rokusatellite and automatically launch HBO.

Click LINK ACCOUNT at the bottom of your final screen to complete set up.

You're now ready to control your entertainment devices with your voice. Try saying, "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on the TV".
You can also say, "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn off my TV", or "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn off my entertainment center" to power everything off.

Scenarios that work well with Logitech Harmony and Amazon Alexa

Alexa, tell Harmony to turn off my entertainment center
Have Harmony power everything off. You can also say, "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn off the TV."

Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on the Xbox
Harmony will turn on your TV, AV receiver and Xbox and set everything to the correct input. Pick up your game controller and start playing.

Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on the Discovery channel
Set up Favorite Channels and Harmony can directly tune to them.

Alexa, change channel to 29
Navigate using channel numbers when you may not know the station name. You can also try "Alexa, next / previous channel."

Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on NetflixHave a Roku? Harmony can launch channels directly on your Roku device. Your TV and inputs will all be taken care of.Some smart TVs and set-top boxes allow Harmony to directly launch the Netflix app. Create a "Watch Netflix" Activity in your Harmony account and jump to it with a single voice command.

Alexa, tell Harmony to pause*Activities first turned on using an Alexa voice command, such as "Alexa, turn on the TV" may be controlled by saying, "Alexa, pause". You may always say, "Alexa, pause my TV" or "Alexa, pause Netflix." Also try, stop, play, resume, fast forward and rewind. *Learn more.You can also try stop, play, resume fast forward and rewind.

Alexa, tell Harmony to increase the volume*Similar to pause, Activities first turned on using Alexa will support "Alexa, mute, turn up / down the volume". You can also say, "turn up the volume by 15", or any value between 1 and 20. *Learn more.Harmony can increase, decrease or mute your volume using Alexa voice commands.

There are some keywords you should avoid

Some Harmony Activity or FavoriteFavourite TV channel names conflict with things Amazon Alexa would like to do natively. For example, Activities with the word "Music", "Pandora", or "Spotify" will often not trigger through Harmony and will instead begin playing music through Alexa. You may want to consider, "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on the tunes" as a friendly name to trigger a Harmony music-based Activity.

Alexa may also have difficulty differentiating between similarly sounding names such as "ESPN""BBC" and "ESPN2""BBC 2". Or Roku's "Rdio" channel and your "Radio" Activity.

Customize

Updating your voice friendly names

You may view each of your friendly names and identify which Harmony Activity or FavoriteFavourite TV Station they will trigger from the Amazon Alexa app. Navigate to Menu > Skills and view your list under the "Your Skills" section.

You may add, delete or adjust any of your Harmony Activity, FavoriteFavourite TV or satellite station or Roku channel friendly names using the Amazon Alexa mobile app. Navigate to Menu > Skills > Your Skills, then scroll down and tap on the Harmony logo. Tap Disable Skill and then tap Enable Skill. You'll be prompted to sign into your Harmony account where all your previously saved friendly names will be shown. You may add, delete or rename any of these.

Once complete, be sure to say "Alexa, discover devices" so Alexa becomes aware of the new or updated names. You will have to tap Forget beside any deleted device names within the "Your Devices" section to notify Alexa to forget past names.

Creating or updating Harmony Activities

After creating a new Activity using the Logitech Harmony mobile app, say "Alexa, discover devices" in order to notify Alexa of the change. You do not need to disable and re-link your account unless you'd like to modify the friendly names for the new Activity.

FAQs

How does Alexa know which device to send volume and navigation commands?

In order for Alexa to know where to send navigation or volume commands you must first start your Harmony Activity using voice. "Alexa, turn on the TV", "Alexa, turn on the news", or "Alexa, turn on my Xbox" will turn on your devices and set everything to the correct input. "Alexa, turn up the volume" or "Alexa, pause" will now properly route commands to your entertainment system and stay in sync with other commands sent using your Harmony remote or Harmony mobile app.

Alexa will route entertainment commands such as "Alexa, turn up the volume", to Harmony for a period of time after you power on your Harmony Activity using voice. Requesting media from other services such as "Alexa, play music from Spotify" will also stop Alexa from routing volume or play/pause commands to Harmony.

You can directly send Harmony entertainment commands by specifying the device at the end of each voice command. For example, "Alexa, turn up the volume on my TV", "Alexa, pause my TV", or "Alexa, pause Netflix" will always work.

Ensure that Alexa doesn't have multiple smart home devices with the same name. For example, ensure the Alexa app > Menu > Smart Home does not list any devices with duplicate names such as "TV" and "Tv" — forget any unneccessary duplicates.

Can I control more than one Harmony hub?

Logitech Harmony and Amazon Alexa is currently only able to control one set of entertainment devices associated to a single Logitech Harmony hub-based product.

Enabling third party skills such as Yonomi will allow you to control a second hub; however they're limited to powering on and off Harmony Activities and can not control Favorite Channels, play, pause or volume controls.

Why isn't Alexa recognizing my Harmony voice commands?

Alexa does it's best to recognize the words you say, but more distinct words will work better than short words or words with acronyms. For example, Alexa may easily understand "Discovery channel", while having trouble with "CNN" or distinguising between "BBC" and "BBC One".

How can I change the default increment used to adjust the volume?

When you say "Alexa, ask Harmony to increase the volume", Harmony will send the volume up command multiple times in order to change the level by a reasonable amount, depending on your particular device. The same goes for decreasing the volume. If this amount is too much or too little then you may change the default by saying, "Alexa, ask Harmony to set my default volume units to ____". We permit a value between 1 and 20.

Changing the default volume setting requires enabling the "Harmony — Inactive" skill which will then be applied to the "Harmony" smart home skill. Using the Amazon Alexa app, navigate to Menu > Skills, search for "Harmony" and install the "Harmony — Inactive" (red icon) skill. Once installed, say "Alexa, ask Harmony to set my default volume units to ____". We permit a value between 1 and 20.

After making this change, subsequent commands to raise or lower the volume will obey the new default you have configured. You also have the option of asking Harmony to raise or lower the volume by a specific number of units, between 1 and 20. For example, "Alexa, ask Harmony to increase the volume by 15".

How can I disconnect Alexa and Harmony?

You may disconnect Amazon Alexa from Harmony account within the Alexa app by disabling the Harmony skill. Alternatively, if you change your Harmony account password, any connected 3rd party devices such as Amazon Alexa will no longer be authenticated and will be unable to control your account.

Navigate to Menu > Skills > Your Skills.

Scroll down and tap the Harmony skill, then Disable Skill.

Alexa will no longer control your Harmony account; regardless of them still being displayed inside the Alexa app. To remove the Harmony Activity and TV Station names from your Alexa app you must select Forget beside each device in the Smart Home section of the Alexa app. Alternatively, select "Forget All" to clear all devices.

Which Alexa devices can I use with Harmony?

You may use any of the following Alexa devices with your Harmony hub-based product:

Amazon Echo

Echo Dot

Echo Show

Amazon Tap

Amazon Dash Wand*

Amazon Fire TV*

*Amazon Dash Wand and Amazon Fire TV does not support the "Alexa" wake word and requires you to first press the voice button.

If you're having trouble changing to a specific channel, you might say "Alexa, change to channel number 12".

To change to a station name, such as Discovery channel or ESPNSky Sports say "Alexa, tell Harmony to turn on ESPNSky Sports".

Alexa displays an "Unable to link account" error.

The Alexa app allows 10 minutes to link your Harmony account, including the time it takes to set up your friendly names. An error message will appear after 10 minutes; however all of your favoritefavourite names have already been saved. Click the LINK ACCOUNT button a second time and you'll be able to complete the linking process again.

Support for controlling locks

For security purposes, Harmony Activities containing lock devices such as August Smart Lock will not be discovered by Alexa. We recommend using these Activities directly with your Harmony remote or the Harmony mobile app.

How Harmony integrates with Alexa

All Harmony hub‑based remotes

Harmony connects with the Amazon servers, allowing you to use your Harmony Activities with Alexa voice commands. Ensure your Harmony hub and Amazon Alexa are on the same Wi‑Fi network.

Harmony remotes without Harmony Hub

As Harmony and Alexa communicate over your home Wi‑Fi network, Harmony products that do not come with a Wi‑Fi enabled Harmony Hub cannot integrate with Amazon Alexa.

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Our Activity troubleshooter can fix most problems

We recommend visiting our Harmony Activity troubleshooter to help narrow down the specific problem and find instructions on how to correct it. Device not turning on? Switching to the wrong input? We can help.